I had a revelation about self-awareness today. It came to me through the use of fountain pens. Sometimes it is the most mundane things that bring about awareness.
In the last few months, I have switched from ballpoint to fountain pens. I am a bit picky about my stationery. I found the perfect-sized dot grid journal that I have bought at least four times in the last year. I have bought the same type of ballpoint pens for the last 10 years. With the increase in my writing, I was going through so many pens and, frankly, it felt so wasteful. I was tossing at least one a week. I decided to explore fountain pens with refillable ink converters and bottles of ink.
Another odd thing about me is that I write small. Tiny little letters. So I needed an extra fine tip on the nib of whatever pen that I picked. I bought one, kind of middle of the line in price. It came, I used it, I hated it. I didn’t realize that fountain pens are weighted and you cannot put the lids on the back. Having two pieces that aren’t together is simply a recipe for me losing at least one of those pieces. Also, extra fine? No, I had to write almost twice the height I normally would have. I continued to research to see what others might be a better fit. On a whim, I ordered a cheaper all-black one on Amazon. It has, quite literally, been an amazing pen.
A few months later, the ink started blooming. I was getting annoyed since, writing as small as I do, the blooming meant I had to write larger again. But I really liked this pen. I kept checking the tines, trying to gently squeeze them together, or bend them down. Nothing helped, until I noticed there was the finest piece of lint running down the centre. I pulled it off and started a new page in my journal. It stopped; I was stoked. I quickly ordered a second in blue so I could have both blue and black ink on the go at the same time. Nerd.
A few days ago it started happening again. So I switched to the blue, same thing. I was looking at both pens, but this time I was looking for more mysterious lint and thinking that I probably need to dust my house. I was getting so irritated, and I thought to myself that the felt liners that I use seemed to be leaking extra ink as well. Was it the weather change? Still, the ink kept blooming.
Yesterday the black started working correctly. This morning I switched to the blue, and that was working correctly. I was about halfway through writing out my dream from last night before I thought to go back to the pages from a few days ago. It bloomed, so did the black. Back to today’s page, no blooming. It was specific pages throughout the journal. The paper.
Here’s the thing: every time I looked up why these pens could possibly be blooming, the paper was always suggested as the problem. I dismissed it every time. I had been using these notebooks for years; the pages were the same throughout, and I had never had an issue with the inks before. But I had changed the pens.
One hell of a metaphor for a cognitive bias.
I changed one factor that I would not have thought would matter. I don’t agree with the mentality that a pen is a pen (see the nerd statement above). But if one pen were consistent, why would another not be? You are going to assume the changed factor is the cause. Especially when the issue was sporadic. This is where learning, introspection, and reflection gain self-awareness in the oddest of places.
How many situations could I apply this concept to?
You change one factor, and suddenly you see failures in the external conditions that you weren’t previously aware of. You change one perspective, and suddenly everything shifts.
Until tomorrow 🖤
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